


so mary climb in

by Missy



Category: Thunder Road (Song)
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/F, Growing Up, High School, Yuletide Madness 2015, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 05:31:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5527817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>High school lovers become vagabond travelers.  But in between, well - there lies the song...</p>
            </blockquote>





	so mary climb in

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redletters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redletters/gifts).



Lisa buys her first set of wheels when she’s sixteen. It’s a third-hand baby but mostly cherry, and it’s all hers right awayhanks to the deal she struck with the first owner. The car’s a Cadillac, pink, hatchback roof and a set of fins that gleam like a shark when she’s driving full speed toward the lights. She spends her Saturdays washing it before she takes it out on the town, hanging out in the parking lot during dances and trying to score a little action from the bored and the rebellious. It’s a good time – never too much, just wild enough, nights filled with screeching tires and the sound of brown bags crinkling and the moaning of the young and the wild. It’s all she needs until she’s seventeen, and everyone starts to pair off – and all she has left is the roar of her engine and the flash of a caution light. There’s Chuck and Roy and Buddy and Duane, but there’s no one to hang her passion on. 

Not yet.

 

***

 

She notices Mary for the first time in shop class –mostly because she’s the only other girl there (later Lisa finds out that that’s because home ec was full). Over bookends and sparking metal they start to form a friendship. 

“You’ve got awful soft hands,” comes from Lisa out of nowhere at one point, and Mary giggles and blushes, staring at the ground shyly. Lisa’s waiting for a rainy day, and when it finally comes she asks to drive Mary home, the both of them hiding under the black wing of Lisa’s jacket until they get to the safety of the car.

“Built it by myself,” Lisa says.

“I can tell. You worked hard on this,” Mary says, playing with the cheetah print interior. 

***

 

Lisa kisses her under a stop sign, waiting for the intersection to clear, and she can feel her pulse kick to life like a bass drum, as if she’d been waiting her whole life for that second.

 

*** 

 

“What are you going to do after graduation?”

They’re parked on the Brooklyn Bridge, and Lisa laughs into the chilly sunlight. “I love you for thinking I will.”

Mary sit up straight suddenly, as if she’d been stricken with a ruler across the knuckles. “Of course you will! You have so much potential!”

Lisa can see the future, pre-destined, in a way a romantic like Mary can’t. It’s going to be a garage life until until she’s old enough to keel over of a heart attack – a lifetime of normal, of steady. And she hates it – she wants to kick down the walls and scream and fight against it, but it’s as solid as a gravestone. As her own mother’s name, written in lime, down at the Quarry Cemetery.

 

*** 

 

She buys the guitar for her birthday, planning to surprise Mary with a song. Nothing by Roy – he’s to melancholy for such an occasion. Nothing by Buddy, either – he’s too optimistic. So she tries for something new and original and fresh that nobody would ever think of.

 

***

 

She knows all about Mary’s past by the time they graduate high school. The way she’d rejected boys without fear; for reasons none of them suspected, even though they’d each all but set themselves aflame to get her attention.

They soon fade away. After graduation Lisa finds a garage willing to take a female apprentice on, and Mary gets a job clerking at Lehmann’s. They blow their money on fudge sundae dates and head to bars at night, dancing close and slow under low lights to the throbbing pulse of their blood.

Time passes and passes, and soon they’re getting near to thirty.

 

***

 

Mary’s parents would hate her. Lisa knows that and doesn’t ask to meet them. So together they meet at midnights on her parent’s front porch, the wind whipping around them and pushing them together.

 

*** 

 

Something in Lisa snaps apart one day. She starts to realize that she’s wasting her time waiting for the world to change. So why hesitate and hope? Why not take off? 

What’s the point of being safe, if you’re just gonna get ground under somebody’s heel? What’s the point of walking a fine line until you die, if you’re just going to end up in the same place you were born?

She saves up everything she can sock away from her summer job. Most of the money from her giftwrapping gig at Loehman’s, too, until she has a couple hundred dollars. It’s enough for gas and food, enough to last til they can get somewhere clean.

She meets Mary on the porch. She plays her the song she wrote, the one about running far from this backwater town. The choice is hers. She can run or she can fly, but Lisa won’t stay.

Mary takes a step off the porch. Then another, another, another…

**Author's Note:**

> Your queer interp of the song got me terribly excited, I couldn't resist writing this little treat in response. Happy holidays and have a great Yuletide!


End file.
